Posted
by
Zonkon Thursday August 03, 2006 @02:20PM
from the don't-mean-a-thing-if-you-aint-got-that-swing dept.

1up is reporting on comments from Phil Harrison, saying that the PS3 is in full production mode. There are apparently already 10,000 devkits out there, and something like 100 games in the pipe already for the console. From the article: "Sounds pretty much like the usual rah-rah, go-team kind of stuff you'd expect to hear before a major system launch, but mentions of third-party support become far more interesting when you learn that many folks, both within Sony and without, are apparently 'scared of the wrath of Phil Harrison,' according to a Guardian source. Are third-party developers as excited and supportive as Harrison would have us believe, or are they just scared of receiving a Sony-flavored beat down?"

Sony have quite cleverly declared that the PS3 will be completely region-free. The implications of this are that they can then get modchips outlawed completely, even in countries like Australia where they've been ruled legal. After all, if there's no regioning in the system, the only reason to get a modchip is to play 'backups' (which we all know is basically a synonym for 'pirated copies') and the occaisonal homebrew.

We don't know how this generation is going to play out. We don't know how good the PS3 will do. We don't know how good the graphics are. We don't know how the Wii games will look, and most of us don't know how they'll play. We don't know how adults and non-gamers will respond to the Wii. We don't know if the PS3 is going to be worth it for them.

We know nothing, and history only tells us one thing: Unexpected things do happen.

That's only movies and if Bluray still exists when the ICT is reintroduced you can probably buy a standalone player for 50 bucks. Never mind that I wouldn't use a PS3 for movies considering Sony's stellar track record with drive quality...

Everyone knows Sony is better on its word than MS: if they say the PS3 is coming out, it's coming out, and in large numbers. Mistakes in the past aside, they won't make the same mistake MS did with the 360.No, indeed, they are making other mistakes.

Disclaimer: I plan on getting a PS3 on the release day.

The doom and gloom talk surround Sony is based on (by order of importance):

a) the arguably prohibitively high price of the PS3b) the staggering loss it is nonetheless taking per unit soldc) whether or not Blu

All of the platforms are going to have (or do have) problems. 360 has its overheating and supply issues. Microsoft rushed it to market like a madman, and has been playing catch-up since. They released how many bug patches the first few months? Has anyone heard anything about how many games are slated for Wii? Seems like every game commercial or trailer I see says "Coming to PC, XBox360 and PS3." or some subset of those three. Hardly ever is Wii mentioned.

Yeah, yeah. What would a reporter expect him to say?Considering that the console is due on the scene in only 4 months, I would hope that developers had all the tools they needed by now. This isn't realy much of a statement, and actually seems like a backhanded admission that things haven't been going well up to now."All the pieces of the puzzle are there..."To dust off an old chestnut, do you want a cookie or something? Why is this worthy of Slashdot news?

My sources tell me that it's better than that, that there's a huge surprise in store for PS3 buyers.

Sit down - because you may find this one difficult to believe. But it's 100% true.

Every PS3 will come with a $2,000 coupon towards a brand new Sony plasma TV. And yes, if you use the coupon toward a TV costing less than $2,000 (and Sony markets three, right now, and that's going by MSRP, so you can find many more), the TV is free.

So for $600, you not only get the best console, but you get a high quality television as part of the bargain.

Oh, and one more thing.

Yes, the PS3 will come with Linux. But it will also come with Mac OS X. Sony's the first company since 1996 to license the Macintosh operating system. You can't get better than that.

Just because you found a quote that can be attributed to Seamus Blackley does not mean that Sony didn't say it first.I remember, very clearly, when the PS2 tech demos (remember the rubber duck?) came out, about boasts of Toy Story graphics by Sony. I also remember the post by a Pixar employee refuting the claim.

Unfortunately, it's gotten so buried in the 'net by trolling fanboys playing he-said-she-said that it's impossible to find a link anymore. Closest I can come with a quick search is:

According to a report, about 200 thousand component sets were shipped to Asus in June, which means that the company is in position to build 200 thousand game consoles. Seems like a nice start for Sony.

I used to worry about Zonks posts, but lets be honest, who really cares how much microsoft is paying him to shill?
Once everything is released we'll all be off to sources we trust to help make our decisions anyway.

I don't really care either (doubting that these posts to SLashdot are having any kind of influence in the world at large), but it would be nice for historical record if a tag trail were there to remind him and the rest of us what once was.

Sony is facing a struggle over its PlayStation 3, with critics concerned about the processor and the price. Jack Schofield reports on the next stage in the console wars.This is taken from the guardian newspaper. [guardian.co.uk] I don't think it took much surfing to find a negative view about Sony's PS3. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it is not just a slashdot slant (as with most things), there are a lot of people who don't like what has happened. The only one with a slant, it would seem, is you.

I agree it's easy to find negative stories about the PS3. There are also positive stories - such as PS3's going to manufacturing. What is a slant is when you take a positive or neutal story and put negative spin on it - after all, if there are so mnay negative stories already why try to spin the neutral ones in that direction as well?I have no slant of my own, I think all three next-gen consoles have compelling features. I would just like to see straightforward reporting here instead of commentary that m

This is compared against the "good news" of the other consoles? As a relatively disconnected gamer who is intentionally keeping away from the hype wars that the current generation of consoles is generating, haven't every one of them had bad news?

Xbox 360: Overheating. Rumors of catching fire? Tons of bug patches in the first few months? This does not lend me to say "Wow, very stable and something I'd want to buy for my child's room."

Not terribly long ago, Inquirer ran a story [theinquirer.net] about how the Cell processor in the PS3 suffered from a rather striking lack of local memory (e.g. cache) bandwidth. "Striking," as in the read bandwidth being something like 3 orders of magnitude slower than the corresponding write bandwidth.
I'm curious whether this problem was fixed by spinning new silicon, or whether Sony must ship their flawed boxes as-is.